tension

Surface tension, tensegrity, bends, twists, knots, inflation, elasticity; all of these phenomena play with physical forces to create structures that are lighter, more mobile and adaptive than conventional brick-and-mortar buildings. How are these structures designed and used by artists and designers? What situations and environments can we envisage, when our shelters and clothing can morph from one to the other and back again? How do we make architecture more resilient, yet less rigid? What traditional crafts and what new materials can we combine to make our living spaces into self-sustaining organisms?

related events

The SleepingBagDress prototype by Ana Rewakowicz involves a creation of multipurpose inflatable dress that through inflation can change and adapt to different situations and environments. Following the legacy of Archigram and Michael Webb's Suitaloon and Cushicle, Ana's concept evolves around the idea of clothing as portable architecture and brings our individual needs to the basic, everyday experience of survival and "you never know WEAR?" situations.

14 artists and technologists from Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden and Canada

The participants spent a week in the FoAM lab in Brussels working on prototypes, models and full scale structures that use the force of tension to sustain their shape and structural integrity, such as inflatables, nets and tensegrity structures.

From the pneumatic turmoil of the tension workshop a shiny airtight meeting room suited for anyone from ordinary folks to inflated executives, is part of a show at Looking Glass. The silvery plastic film houses the bodies and heads of three people at a time for an intimate meeting in the shared chamber. This triangular starfish evolved out of the experiments of Linda Karlsson. Her inflated costumes started to swallow-up more and more people, duos and eventually trios.